• The durable power of attorney;

• The health care power of attorney;

• The advance directive or living will; and

• Funeral planning documents.

I’ll also be presenting a free webinar for the Green Burial Council on Wednesday, April 29th (and available thereafter on YouTube) on the topic of “Funeral Pre-Planning: Documenting Your Wishes for a Natural Burial.”

So it seems appropriate to provide a valuable resource here: a short guide to funeral planning documents and a state-by-state guide on how to document your wishes in the states that allow it.

In the United States there is a common law rule known as the “right of sepulcher.” The right of sepulcher belongs to a person or a group of people and gives them the right to:

1. control the remains of a deceased individual; and

2. determine the place and manner of the disposition of such remains.

Nearly every state has a statute that sets out who holds the right of sepulcher. The states take essentially the same approach, with a few tweaks here and there. The first priority belongs to the surviving spouse. If there is no surviving spouse, then adult children. If there is no spouse and no adult children, then the parents of the deceased. If no spouse, children, or parents, we go to siblings, then other “blood” kin like grandparents, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc.

There are, of course, many complicated family situations and many individuals don’t have close blood kin. Forty-seven states allow an individual to execute a document designing an individual as their agent to hold the right of sepulcher instead of the default person(s) named in the statute. I call these “designated agent” statutes.

So, for example, imagine an elderly woman’s husband has dementia. She may wish to execute a document appointing one of her children or a friend to hold the right of sepulcher and make funeral planning decisions for her.

Forty-four states allow an individual to leave binding instructions regarding the disposition of their own remains—for example to indicate that they wish for green burial. I call these “personal preference” statutes.

The states vary widely in terms of how to name a “designated agent” to hold the right of sepulcher or how to document personal preferences regarding a funeral and disposition.

The table below sets out the kinds of documents can be used to appoint a designated agent or memorialize personal preferences. It also includes the statute in each state so that you can look at the exact language.

Suzanne Kelly is chair of the Town of Rhinebeck (New York) Cemetery Committee, which advises the Town Board on all cemetery operational and maintenance matters. Suzanne was influential in causing the Cemetery to open the Natural Burial Ground section in 2014.

Suzanne is also the author of the 2015 book Greening Death – Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to Earth.

The following is a transcript of my interview with Suzanne, which was recorded in December 2025. It has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Tanya: Suzanne, thank you so much for joining us today on Death et seq. Do you want to just take a couple minutes to introduce yourself, your background, and the work that you do?

Suzanne: Sure. I’m a long time green burial advocate, I guess, for the past 25 years now. I came to it through two avenues. One was a personal death. My father died, and then I was also working on my PhD. And so I had this academic sort of connection … by way of green burial. And it culminated ultimately in this book called Greening Death. And then I’m also an on-the-ground sort of grassroots advocate, helped to establish a natural burial ground in my hometown that I currently steward. And so those are kind of the two arms, I guess, I would say, both sort of practical and theoretical.

Tanya: Where is your hometown? Where is this natural burial ground?

Suzanne: The town is in the Hudson Valley. New York’s Hudson Valley, so it’s in Rhinebeck, New York.

Tanya: And this is a municipal green burial ground, right, not a private?

Suzanne: Yeah. It’s a municipal cemetery, and we also have a natural burial ground at the cemetery. And, yeah, it’s an interesting model for New York State because there’s not that many municipal cemeteries. There’s three ways that that cemeteries can be set up in New York State. One is municipal, one is religious, and one is not-for-profit that’s overseen by the Division of Cemeteries in New York State. And, actually, our cemetery originally was a not-for-profit cemetery, but in 2002 was taken over by the municipality because it no longer could function. And then in 2014, we opened up the natural burial ground under the auspices of the municipality.

Tanya: And I know that that’s a real concern in New York, and other states too. Right? These old cemeteries that are run by nonprofits and then…

Suzanne: It’s a problem. It’s an ongoing problem. Most of the time, you know, they’ll end up closing the cemetery. They just don’t want to run a cemetery.

Tanya: Right.

Suzanne: But our cemetery, you know, even the conventional part of the cemetery, you know, there’s a lot of plots still for sale. There’s a lot of plots that are still owned by families. It’s a very active cemetery. There are not that many cemeteries in the area. It has a receiving vault that’s no longer used, but, historically, it was used for many of the smaller cemeteries in the area. So it’s one of the larger cemeteries, and so the town took responsibility for it and kept it open. It actually has made massive improvements in the cemetery and the infrastructure and the staffing and also opened up the burial ground.

Tanya: Was there existing extra space in the cemetery that you were able to section off and say this is going to be a natural burial ground, or was additional land acquired?

Suzanne: We already had the land. So the original, the whole cemetery, including the natural burial ground, is around 40 acres. And the original cemetery, which is about maybe 24 acres, started in and around the 1830s. There were a bunch of church cemeteries that came together. And that’s about a quarter mile from where the natural burial ground is, a little bit down the road. And that’s about 18 acres, about 10 of which is set aside for natural burial. It was in the woods. That was probably slated eventually to be clear cut and be made part of the [existing] cemetery. … It’s very gridded and, you know, upright granite stones.

Tanya: “Traditional.” I’m putting traditional in quotation marks. People can’t see that on a podcast.

Suzanne: Yep.

Tanya: Well, I want to talk to you more about that cemetery in in a little bit, but let’s start with some fundamentals. Can you talk a little bit, for those who don’t already know, about what green burial or natural burial is and how that is different from the more “traditional” burial that we’re more used to?

Suzanne: Yeah. So green burial is often described in terms of the negative of what it’s not. Right? So the trilogy of practices that have come to make up the American way of death in the U.S. are the burial vault, which is traditionally made most commonly made out of reinforced concrete, and asphalt, sometimes titanium, sometimes steel, other things, embalming. Right? So traditionally. And, of course, the modern casket, which can be made with treated hardwoods and metals, etcetera. So green burial is much simpler than that. There’s no burial vault.

There’s no embalming. The body is placed inside of some kind of a plant based and biodegradable container. So that’s sort of what it is at its most basic. And then it’s the body is placed in the ground optimally anywhere between three and a half and four feet for active microbial breakdown and decay. In a traditional cemetery … some cemeteries go six feet deep. Even in our conventional cemetery, we don’t even go that deep. We go about five and a half feet, or five feet, to fit the vault in. And then some cemeteries do double deep. But either way, in the green burial ground, optimally, it’s three and a half to four feet.

We don’t do double deep graves in there. So that’s what it is sort of at its most basic. It’s the way that we buried our dead, you know, over a hundred and fifty plus years ago, the way that everybody did it before this trilogy of practices came to kind of, like, take hold. It’s the way that most people bury throughout the world still. And so it’s a kind of going back in a way.

The green burial movement, you know, takes that as sort of its beginning point. And many of the most of the green burial grounds that exist in the U.S. right now, the more than 400 that exist, are focused mostly in terms of what’s going on underground, what we’re doing underground, and how we’re preparing the body. But some of them, like ours, are concerned with what’s happening above ground. So the Green Burial Movement started from this place. It said, you know, burial itself is not land hogging. It’s not using up space. We’re using the fact of human death to conserve, preserve, and restore the land. And that’s we’re doing this on a small scale in Rhinebeck, but we’re nonetheless doing it.

Tanya: Now is what you just described with concern about what’s going on above the land, is that what most people are describing as conservation burial?

Suzanne: Yeah. I like to use the framework that the Green Burial Council puts forth. I think it’s the clearest way. And so the Green Burial Council is a not-for-profit organization. It’s a it’s a certifying body. Were you on the board at one point? I can’t remember.

Tanya: I’m not on the board of GBC. No.

Suzanne: Okay. The Green Burial Council has been around since 2005, and they have three categories for green burial. The hybrid model, which is basically what I mentioned before. You know, it’s really concerned with what’s going on below ground.

You can actually have a green burial in that way. And even in the conventional part of our cemetery, a vaultless, embalmingless, non-modern casket burial. Right? But you could also have an upright stone. And the that’s sort of like the hybrid model.

That’s the lowest. Then the second tier is what we’re we’re certified at, and I’ll explain a little bit more about that.

And then the third tier is the top tier. That’s the conservation burial. Conservation burial and, again, these are kind of the roots of green burial in the U.S. This was kind of the heart of it, was that was the idea that you would use the proceeds that came from green burial to conserve, preserve, and restore the land. Both the land that you were burying on and the land and maybe some other lands that were attached to that were, because there had to be some kind of a conservation partner that was included in this process. So whoever the cemetery was needed to link up with or already be involved with some conservation organization. So that’s what conservation burial is.

And according to the GBC standards, you have to have at least 20 acres. We can’t do that because we’re not 20 acres. So we’re certified at the natural level. And at the natural level, we also have a deed restriction that runs with the land that says this will always be natural burial in perpetuity. I guess we could presumably hook up with a conservation organization. Municipalities have done that for other types of parcels‚ but we haven’t found the need to do that because we’re doing, you know, our own good conservation work. And besides, we couldn’t be certified at the conservation level anyway.

Tanya: Interesting. You mentioned at the first level, the hybrid level, that’s really about a so-called traditional cemetery, a portion of it. I just want to get it straight. Are we talking about certification of the cemetery or of the burials? So because you mentioned grave markers. Because you could have a green burial and then an upright tombstone. Right? Would that be a green burial?

Suzanne: That would be a hybrid.

So the hybrid yeah. So the hybrid as it stands right now and these are the majority of green burials. I just try to simplify it for people. It’s just like, what’s going in the ground? So how the body is prepared and how the body is ultimately interred, that part is green. What’s happening above ground, you know, is a whole separate thing. You could have upright granite stones. You could still be mowing the lawn and etcetera.

And there also could be, presumably, other there could be a section set aside that looks like that, but there also could be, presumably, other vaulted embalmed‚ conventional burials adjacent.

Tanya: Yeah. It is really interesting. The whole terminology of green burial is fascinating to me and how people are receiving the message and what they understand green burial to be. I was talking to a group of folks who don’t really know anything about any of this last week and was describing green burial, and they said, oh, that’s just Jewish burial. That is correct. That is traditional Jewish burial, traditional Muslim burial. As you mentioned, traditional burial in most parts of the world today, it was traditional burial in the United States until a hundred years ago. Right?

Suzanne: Yeah.

Tanya: But that’s not all it is, I guess.

Suzanne: Exactly. Yeah. And like I said, the heart of it, even though the majority of the burial grounds are hybrids, and there’s a whole host of reasons why that is, the heart of the movement is really rooted in conservation, preservation, restoration. And, also in this this idea and, again, these ideas, I think, are at the heart of many religious much religious thinking that burial is green, but that we are tied to the land, that we’re part of the land, that we’re just returning to this place from which we came, in some sense.

So that’s a big difference. The philosophical idea is that we belong there. Yeah.

Tanya: Right. I think green burial can really resonate with people, as you say, for a number of different reasons. And that’s all fine. It doesn’t matter how you got there. What matters is‚ we’re all getting to the same place.

Suzanne: Yeah. And we see this reflected in kind of multiplicity of ways that people got there really reflected in the burials that happened in the green in the green burial space, for instance, in Rhinebeck.

Tanya: So you’re working at a micro level with the cemetery that you’re involved in, but then you’re also working at a macro level with advocacy and trying to push policy work.

What what do you see changing? Let’s just look at New York, for example. What, if anything, do you see changing in New York in terms of how cemeterians or funeral homes or just the general public are approaching green burial?

Suzanne: Well, unfortunately, there are not there still are not too many green burial grounds in New York state, and it’s still a pretty slow growing movement. You know, there’s probably, in the last ten years, maybe double the amount that there were since I wrote the book, but it’s pretty slow going, and it’s been slow going in New York state. So that’s the first thing.

There’s a lot of interest in green burial. We sell a lot of plots, and we’re absorbing because we’re two hours north of New York City. So we absorb you know? And also Connecticut’s not far in New Jersey, and so we absorb a lot of that. There’s one other green burial ground that’s not too far from us near New Paltz.

The interest definitely is growing, but the number of green burial grounds in our area has not grown. The human composting law that was just recently passed, that certainly has shifted things not because anything is open, but it’s certainly the stories about that, I think, have peaked interest, and people are calling wondering what that’s about and if that’s related to what we’re doing, etcetera. But I don’t know how that’s going to end up changing too much because, unfortunately, in New York state, the way that the law was passed, just like crematories, the facility has to be piggybacked onto to a cemetery. And so it’s not like it is in Washington state and some other states where an entrepreneur can just decide to open up a facility. And so‚ it could also deter the growth of it by those cemeteries deciding they don’t want to open up one. There’s a lot of control there. That was a really strong lobby. I actually was not in favor of the law passing that way. I didn’t come out against it publicly. I had folks calling me about it because I didn’t want to get in the way of the advocacy that was happening, but I think it would be a lot better it would have been a lot better off for the technology itself to have had a better push to get it away from that.

Tanya: Yeah. The legalization of natural organic reduction or composting is like a whole another episode.

Suzanne: But I was just saying, people often conflate the two. And so the fact that that has passed, I think, has brought attention to green burial to some degree. It hasn’t changed the fact that there aren’t any others opening up. There are people working on them. Like, I’m still people calling me all the time.

I sometimes work with small cemeteries to try to open up sections‚and there are two folks that I know that are trying to work on some larger projects, some larger conservation projects, but, again, still years in the making, just not happening yet.

Tanya: And so every state’s going to be different in terms of the regulatory structure and what kinds of barriers there might be at the state and local level in terms of regulations and statutes. What kinds of specific issues did you run into when working on the cemetery that you’re involved in?

Suzanne: Not too many because we were already a cemetery. So that’s the beauty of opening up a green burial ground that’s already connected to an existing cemetery.

It’s really pretty simple. You don’t have to. I mean, if you’re a not-for-profit cemetery, which is how most of these cemeteries are going to end up opening because they’re private endeavors, there are really strict rules, and they’re you know, trust funds that you have to set up before you even put a body in the ground. So and they could be upwards of it depending upon if there’s not a hard and fast rule of how how much money it is, it just depends on the size of the lots, a whole bunch of factors that go into figuring that out. But it could be $75,000 or something like that before you even are able to sell plots.

So money is a big factor. The land is very expensive‚ where we live. If you’re going to put it in a place where people are going to actually come, like, there’s one up in Ithaca, New York, but the population is just not as great that year. And that’s about five, four and a half hours away from here. People aren’t people just don’t go there.
Yeah.

Tanya: So the barriers are significant for somebody trying to open a new cemetery.

Suzanne: Barriers are significant for people opening up a new cemetery if you already have an existing cemetery. And this is kind of the model that Ed Bixby, I think, has used from Steelman Town. He first, he started with that, and then he started purchasing up all these other already existing cemeteries because it’s really easy to just‚ turn it into a green burial ground if the land allows for it.

Tanya: So have you found that fewer people are interested in doing that? Is it you talked about two folks who are thinking about opening up new natural or conservation burial grounds. They want to start whole new cemeteries. They’re not as interested in the adaptation model.

Suzanne: Right. I think that the calls that I get, the two are the purists, who just want to do conservation, don’t want to have anything to do with an existing conventional cemetery. And then the people who are running cemeteries now, who are actively running cemeteries, who want to try to bring green burial somewhere into their small cemetery. Now that I think about it, in all this time, I have not had a conversation with anyone who was thinking of buying up a cemetery or taking over a cemetery and turn just turning it into a green burial ground, what was left of the land. No. It’s interesting.

Tanya: Well, that really seems like a lost opportunity. I’ve heard David Fleming from the New York State Association of Cemeteries talk for years about how many abandoned cemeteries there are going to be in New York State. That seems to be really low hanging fruit if there’s if there’s undeveloped land left associated with that cemetery. Right?

Suzanne: I think that the problem in New York state and I know he would be able to answer this. Maybe this is why I haven’t gotten any calls about this. And, like, for instance, in New Jersey, this isn’t the case, which is why Ed Bixby was able to do that and in the other states. I don’t know if an individual can actually take over a cemetery. I don’t know how … it would have to be another board. Right? And then they would have to have money also if the board’s already floundering.

Tanya: You’re right. In New York, an individual couldn’t take over any cemetery, whether it’s a nonprofit or not, but they could take over the nonprofit. Right? I mean, the nonprofit.

Suzanne: Right. I mean, it is it does seem like a good opportunity. It actually could help the municipalities not have to be saddled with these many of whom don’t want it. You know?

Tanya: But you haven’t run into any examples in New York where it would be difficult because of some local or state rule to have green burials in a cemetery. Right? So in other words, there aren’t any local regulations requiring embalming or a casket or a vault.

Suzanne: Not for us. I can’t speak to all the municipalities in New York state.

Tanya: But you haven’t run into any.

Suzanne: We had no resistance. When we initially started in 2009, having conversations about what we were gonna do, it took about five years to get it off the ground‚ just because it’s, again, the municipal pace is really slow. But the funeral directors, we met with them because we wanted to do that, and they didn’t wanna allow shrouds. That was the only resistance that we had, and they were doing a little fear mongering with the groundskeeper at that time. But we just ignored them and moved on. But other than that, you know, it’s interesting because I always say, like, regardless of political party, the cemetery has been so supported in this town by everybody. I mean, maybe now and then, I get a board member who wishes maybe the funeral directors would take it over and it but, like, it’s rare.

But green burial, no. No pushback.

The only other thing we ever had happen was we had a police officer back there. We called for something that had happened on the grounds, and that he was back in the Natural Burial Ground. And he’s like, what are you guys doing back here? It’s like, we’re doing the same thing back here that we’re doing out there. So it can be quite jarring to people who know nothing about it. You know? Yeah.

Tanya: What is it that they’re seeing what is it that he was seeing above the ground that was causing?

Suzanne: I think the mounds. Because all the soil is taken out of the hole, is placed back in the hole and leaves a mound to settle over time. And so and by the way, I have photographs of our conventional cemetery from, like, the 1880s, and there were mounds everywhere. Right?

Tanya: Absolutely.

Suzanne: Yeah. So, uh, it’s just you know, we just don’t have that. We don’t have we don’t know that history. We don’t have that knowledge anymore. But, yeah, I think it’s mostly the mounds.

Tanya: And so for for again, for those who haven’t been to a cemetery lately, what does it look like visually different in the traditional part of the cemetery? Why why isn’t there a mound today?

Suzanne: Well, because first of all, most of the [traditional] burials have vaults. So the vault is placed in the graves to prevent the subsidence that will happen once the body the container collapses, right, and the body decays. That’s primarily why the vault or the liner is used. And then, of course, all the soil that’s taken out of the hole is not placed in the hole because now you have the vault, and you’ve got the casket, you’ve got the body. So it’s carted off, and then it’s leveled off and grass seed is planted so that they can mow over it. So it looks it looks more tamped down. It looks more level.

Tanya: And you don’t have to think that there’s dead people here.

Suzanne: I do think that this is a thing because it’s like what one funeral director said to me who doesn’t love the burial ground. He’s like, you know, the thing that I don’t love about it is that it’s, like, so in your face. So, you know, when you go to the burial, like, all the soil that’s taken out of the hole is placed next to the hole.

It’s not carted away. You can see inside the grave. You the family helps to lower the body into the grave, to fill the grave back up. And then there’s this mound at the end that you can walk through the burial ground and see them going down at different levels. You know? So there’s this active sense that’s that decay is happening, that something is going on here. So that you don’t really have to think about when you’re I know there are upright gravestones, but for some reason, it’s a little bit forgotten as people kind of stroll through.

Tanya: It is really interesting. Right? Psychologically sort of what goes on with all that. But so, one way of thinking about again, I’m putting traditional in quotation marks because it’s relatively recent, even in American history, the the American way of death. It’s sort of sanitizing and pushing death outside of the realm of the living. Our family members used to die at home. Now they die in a hospice outside of the home or in a hospital. We push them out. We used to have open casket viewings and visitations in our home. Funeral parlors are funeral parlors because it used to take place in our parlor. And then we used to build the caskets at home and dig the hole ourselves and put the body in there and put the dirt on it. And then everything that’s happened over the past century has been sanitizing and moving all of those practices away from the family realm. Right?

Suzanne: Right.

Tanya: So is that a phenomenon that you talk about in your in your book?

Suzanne: Yeah.

Tanya: Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Suzanne: Problem that I see in you know, as stewarding the burial ground, you know, as I’m caring for families and, you know, scheduling burials and attending the burials.

I mean, the the green burial movement comes on the heels of, you know, hospice and palliative care, but it also rises up with this this phenomenon of the home funeral movement. You had Lee Webster on. I’m sure she talked about. Right? So these these two things are happening at the same time. Not everybody that chooses a green burial wants to be hands on, but even I mean, the we’ve had some burials where the family does everything they possibly can do within with with in terms of what the law permits.

So in New York state, the the funeral director has to be hired to file a burial permit and to be present for the burial, but they could transfer the permit over to the family, and they can drive their dead to the to the cemetery. And we’ve had families do that. And then they do everything else. They keep the body at home. They take care of the body at home. They, you know, they clothe the body. They they clean the body. All of it. Right? There are some people that don’t want to do any of that and still hire a funeral director or sometimes a doula or in or both. Because like I said, in New York state, you have to hire a funeral director. But even if they don’t do any of those things, there is the burial itself, and we provide this this space where families can have a lot more participation than they otherwise would have access to in a traditional or conventional burial.

We have a burial cart because we don’t have cars that drive down into the woods. We have a burial cart that’s hand drawn that we draw the body into the woods. And the burial cart is so interesting because it was very practical where we got it at the beginning. Like, we have to have this in the woods. But what it ended up becoming was kind of set the pace. It sets the pace for every single burial in a way because it you have to move very slowly. You have to walk very, very slowly with that cart. And so there’s that initial participation. Everybody feels like they’re involved in this journey together towards something as opposed to, like, in a conventional burial, people are late and they show up and they’re like you know what I mean? It’s not you’re not processing to something together.

Tanya: Everything’s all set up at the graveside, with the little tent, and everybody just kinda goes to the graveside.

Suzanne: That is pretty quick. The green burials tend to not be quick. In fact, we’ve had to start to put a cap on them because we’ve had things like three hour burials and at in, like, fifteen degree weather and, like, crazy stuff, you know, that are just not also not practical. But so, anyway, we’ve got the cart. We’ve got the lowering the body into the grave, the filling the grave back up. So these hands on even if people don’t want to do the stuff before, if they’re not really into that kind of, like, home funeral stuff, green there’s no way of getting around green burial being an opportunity to engage in the practices that we’ve been cut off from.

Tanya: Since you are in the somewhat unique position of watching both types, and helping with both types of burials, do you see families and friends react differently to the two types of burials?

Suzanne: Absolutely. It’s an entirely different experience. First of all, on the burial grounds, people who have never been to a green burial, after that, we sell a lot of plots because people are just so moved by what they’ve gone through.

And a lot of it is ineffable. Like, you can’t quite put your finger on what it is. I mean, some people talk about, like, the birds, and some people talk about how the light came through the trees, and some people talk about the journey, and some people talk about, oh, they want to do something to fill in the but it’s kind of all these things. It’s also the way in which the family tends to take more control of the funeral itself, right, rather than having the funeral director say their few words and then send everybody back to the after event. They’re much longer. People seem more invested in the process, and then the impact after, you know, resonates, reverberates.

Tanya: I guess my final question is, in what ways do you think people who are interested in green burial and natural burial can help support the continuation of this movement? We can’t all do like you did and get involved actually in the creation of a natural burial ground in our hometown. But are there other things that we can do? And I guess related to the that also, you mentioned Green Burial Council. If people want to learn more about green burial and where those opportunities are in their local communities, where can they look for more information?

Suzanne: Yeah. I think Green Burial Council is a good place to start because certification is voluntary, but at least there is a list. The Home Funeral Alliance. They have a more comprehensive list, or at least they did for a long time, of all the natural and green burial grounds that exist in the U.S. that are certified and uncertified. So it’ll give you a sense of sort of what’s available in the proximity to where you live. You know, we have volunteer days at our natural burial ground, which is great. So people love to come and help plant trees. We do cleanup and that sort of thing, so that’s a way to become involved. I tell people, you know, if you can’t if you don’t have a green burial ground in your community and you really want to be buried green, like, green burials, Jewish burial, ask your cemetery. Can I have a vaultless burial? You know? Try to change maybe the policies that are just existing in your own little private cemetery, maybe even where you own family plots. So I think there’s some of the more direct ways.

Tanya: Just reaching out. I love the idea of reaching out to the local cemetery and asking, is green burial available? Because the more they get that question, the more they begin to see evidence that there’s demand in the local community and they might consider.

Suzanne: That’s how ours started. I mean, I was a green burial advocate and, like, some of the purists had my heart set on doing a larger conservation project, but there were people a few people who went to the funeral directors and said, I want a green burial, and that made its way back to the cemetery.

And then the committee took it up. So it does really start there. Funeral directors, in my experience, I’m not that they’re running the cemetery, but they did they did bring that to the cemetery. They want to give people what they want. They really do, even if they don’t want it. You know, they’re going to charge for it anyway. You know? They they’re going to find out you know? So but they really do want to serve families. That’s what they’re there for. So, anyway, it’s a good place, I think, to begin. I agree.

Tanya: That’s great. Well, wonderful. Well, thank you again so much for taking the time to do this. This was a great conversation. I think it’ll be really helpful for people to you know, it like, you mentioned the composting, and it was just, like, a week or so ago that Martha Stewart had that some Instagram post where she said she was interested in composting, but I think she was really describing green burial.

Suzanne: Yeah. So that’s but that’s what I’m saying. Like, so these words get kind of mixed up together. But it’s not I mean, technically, obviously, they’re different things, but the sentiment is the same. Right? I think Katrina Spade would even agree with that. It’s the same ideology behind it. It’s just we’re just going about it in a different way and for different reasons.

Tanya: So I’ve been I’ve been doing a public survey on consumer preferences and methods of disposition for the last two years. And I ask people, have you heard of this method disposition? Would you consider it? And then ask them to rank order their preferences. And green burial is now the number three out of six preferences.

Suzanne: Oh, interesting.

Tanya: It’s about 33% of people rank green burial first or second.

Suzanne: Wow.

Tanya: But then but then what’s really interesting too is I can slice and dice the data.
If you pick green burial first, what was your number two? And a lot of people, a significant number of people who pick green burial first, NOR or composting is their number two. And for people who pick composting first, green burial is their number two.

Suzanne: It probably depends on where they live. You know? I think a lot of it has to do with that. If they’re living in an urban area, you know, it’s more likely that they’re not going to choose green burial. Like I said, we do get people from New York City, but I think that if it was available, right, that there would be way more people that would choose that.

Tanya: Well, I do think that Katrina originally conceived of composting as an urban solution.

Suzanne: Yes.

Tanya: For people who are interested in green burial, but didn’t have connection I mean, in New York City where you can have some limited green burial in Greenwood. Right?

Suzanne: For a lot of money.

Tanya: For a lot of money. But that’s not a solution for the whole city. So composting would make sense if they can figure out how to get it offered in the city.

Suzanne: Yeah. So much sense. Yeah.

Tanya: I know there are some folks in the green burial movement who look at composting as a problem.

Suzanne: I know what you’re talking about. I don’t see it. I think there’s enough to go around, and I don’t think it’s detracting. The reasons why conservation burial grounds haven’t opened in the numbers that they have really don’t have anything to do with the fact that NOR is now legal in New York state. You know, there’s bigger problems, bigger reasons why, you know, that really have to do with the access to land and money. I mean,

Tanya: That’s absolutely yeah. Zoning is one of the biggest issues.

Suzanne: You can’t open cemetery in the counties around New York City. Right? We’re the first county outside of New York City north of it where you can open a cemetery. And that’s an old law, you know, because they just it’s been around for a while.

Tanya: Well, my, uh, my younger son is a sophomore at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. And he took a course in land use and zoning last semester because his mother’s a property lawyer and made him. But for his final project for the class, he looked at a bunch of the counties around Syracuse to see what their zoning laws were about opening a new cemetery and specifically about green burial. There’s pretty much no place up there that you can, without going and getting a new rule passed, open a new cemetery.

Suzanne: Wow. They don’t want any other cemeteries in the in those counties.

Tanya: No. I mean, no municipality really wants a new cemetery. Right? It’s taking land off the property tax rolls. It adds no revenue. And it’s perpetually dedicating land to a purpose that’s not going to create, you know, economic whatever. So you’re exactly right. It’s about the rules that are in place, access to land, and money.

Suzanne: I hope more open. It’s my greatest wish.

Tanya: Absolutely. Well, thanks again so much for joining me.

If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider subscribing to the Death, et seq. podcast on your favorite podcasting app!

In the United States, the law promises all buried decedents the “right” to a “perpetual undisturbed repose.” In other words, once we are planted in a grave, we have a legal right to remain in that grave FOREVER. Of course that’s a pretty difficult promise for the law to keep, and you may not be surprised to learn that the living are constantly moving, expanding, and building, and sometimes we find that cemeteries are very inconveniently located on land we’d like to use for other purposes.

How do we resolve this conflict between the rights of the dead and the interests of the living?

Again, you may not be surprised to learn that the living often win, especially if they have a “public purpose” in mind, such as a road, a school, or, as in the case of O’Hare, an airport.

When O’Hare was first opened for commercial air traffic in 1955, the surrounding land was still largely rural. That changed, quickly, as Chicago expanded. In 2001, the O’Hare Modernization Project was announced. The plan was to extend existing runways and build new, more efficient parallel runways. That plan required, of course, new land. Some 300 homes would need to be demolished. But it also meant that two cemeteries were in the way: Resthaven Cemetery and St. Johannes Cemetery.

The Resthaven Cemetery dates to the mid-1800s and includes the graves of 300 early residents of Bensenville, an area established by German dairy farmers in the 1830s.

The St. Johannes Cemetery was consecrated in 1849 and continued accepting burials until 2006. Nearly 1,500 people were buried there in the century-and-a-half it was in use. The cemetery was the final resting place of congregants at St. John’s United Church of Christ, which sold most of their land to the airport in the 1950s but retained ownership of the 5-acre cemetery which was adjacent to the airport.

St. Johannes Cemetery around 2010.

The O’Hare Modernization Project proposed to relocate both Resthaven Cemetery and St. Johannes Cemetery to make way for the new runways. St. John’s United Church of Christ objected and filed a lawsuit in 2009 to block the acquisition and forced relocation of the cemetery.

That lawsuit went to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in a split decision that O’Hare had the authority to condemn the St. Johannes Cemetery and relocate the graves. Writing for the majority, Judge Diane Wood found that the O’Hare Modernization Act did not violate the Constitution or the law in its expansion plans because there was “no discrimination or targeting of religious institutions.” Indeed, she noted, “If the decision were ours to make . . . we would find that there really is ‘no realistic, economically practical alternative’” to moving the cemetery.

The nearly 1,500 graves in St. Johannes Cemetery were thereafter moved, at a cost of reportedly $17 million.

Curiously, though, O’Hare decided not to move Resthaven Cemetery. It remains surrounded by the airport and contains the graves of early Chicagoans like Laura Elfring, a 13-year old girl who was killed in 1898 by a morning milk train.

Next time you fly in or out of O’Hare, see if you can spot her gravestone.

What songs would you include in your funeral playlist?